Nugget hatch day

As day 18 ends and your eggs no longer turn, as the humidity builds with your anxiety levels, theres really not much to do now except wait, check whether you need to add more water and wait some more.
Or, if you are me, read and re read what to expect from day 18 onwards and check obsessively to see whether anything is pipping yet.
Your eggs should hatch day 21, but i wasn't sure whether that meant they would pip on day 21 or whether they should be hatched by then. It doesn't help that they could hatch earlier or later than that. Hatching day 19 probably means your incubator was running a bit hot, or maybe that the eggs had been at correct temperatures to start before you set them.
Haching days later could mean your incubator was a bit cooler than it should be, I found many people who stated they had eggs hatch as late as day 28, but anything that came out really late had issues.
You could candle I guess, there seems to be as many people online who will tell you it's okay to open the incubator whenever, they hatched eggs in their hands and let their friends hold eggs while exhausted chicks pushed the remaining eggs shell of their tiny heads,
as there are people who tell you don't touch the eggs or open the incubator! your tiny chick has spent days trying to get into the correct position to find it's air cell. If you screw it up for them they can pip in the wrong place and drown or hit a vein and bleed out. Removing the cover of your incubator will screw up all the humidity you are trying to keep high enough that the membrane will be ideal for them to break out of it.

We didn't open ours, even though I wanted to. It's possible people who open their incubators whenever they want, live in places where the humidity is high enough that it won't affect their hatching chicks. I didn't want to hurt their chances of finding the air cell. If they didn't get further than this stage, I didn't want it to be because I just couldn't wait.

At the end of day 20 we got our first external pip.

 

Egg 7 had pipped into the air cell, taken their first breaths and then broken a tiny hole through the shell, yay! I knew it could take about 24 hours from now if it even did hatch, the chick needs to absorb it's blood supply and yolk. It needs to rest and breathe and eventually start using it's egg tooth, legs and neck muscles to zip around the egg shell, breaking pieces off in a line the entire way around so it can get out.

It didn't go any further that night and had maybe made its' pip hole a tiny bit bigger by the time I left for work friday morning, neither had the others.

I got a call at work about 11am from Miss A,

'Guess what, we have a chick! and it's not who you think it is!'

Egg 10, in record time had pipped and zipped and somehow heaved himself out of his vertically positioned egg.

 

 

He was damp and exhausted, peeping and flopping around.

Hatching is hard work!

 

 

By the time I got home from work he was much fluffier and energetic. He'd do what I called a crazy circuit, sleep by egg 10, peep, frantically squish himself over egg 9, sleep by egg 1, crash into egg 10 and sleep again.

Chicks can survive for (i think) about 36 hours off their absorbed egg yolk. He didn't need to come out yet. I didn't want to upset the incubator humidity. Some people will remove their chicks as they hatch, it stops them playing chicken football with their hatching friends. Some will leave them all until they have hatched and say chicken football encourages the remaining chicks to hatch.

We only had 4 eggs in the Brinsea, you an fit 7, it could be that Orpingtons lay big eggs and the chicks are large, but I really can't imagine having 7 hatching chicks in here.

Egg 7 peeped and slowly worked on her pip hole, chipping away, sleeping, peeping, all while being knocked about and slep on by number 10.

It took almost 23 hours before anything much else happened. All of a sudden there was a line of broken shell, working counter clockwise she quickly chipped away at her egg prison.

 

 

 

It only took a few minutes and she was out!

She laid on the floor, panting and wet and so tired!

Number 10 raced all over the place.

 

I realised watching this video that egg 1 had already pipped too, you can see her little beak poking out through her pip hole.

She started about 6pm and decided to do things a bit differently.

 

 

As number 10 and 7 threw themselves around, number 1 decided to just push her hole face through her pip hole.

Oh well, she can breathe I thought, she should be fine.

I went to bed with 2 and a half hatched chicks in the Brinsea. Nothing happening in the Rotohatch although that was expected.

 

On Saturday morning number 7 and number 10 went to their waiting brooder box to leave number 1 to finish hatching in peace.

 

And she did! she got to stay in a bit longer to fluff up.

The brooder box is the same one we used for the wild ducks, cleaned and disinfected. We divided it in half with a cardboard wall and put down a layer of paper towels for the first 4 days, food was sprinkled on the paper towels while the chicks learn what is food and hopefully they will eat that and not the wood shavings.

 

I had though egg 9 had a good chance and egg 12 was a possible hatch. We moved 12 into the Brinsea and decided to give them a few more days. We removed and opened egg 11, this chick had quit before day 18.

 

Just after day 21 we had 3 happy healthy nuggets! all look good, absorbed everything, good eyes, legs and feet, no bum issues. They slept under the ecoglow, nibbled their started crumbs and got used to drinking water on their little wobbly legs

candling day 18. Lock down!

I was supposed to update these just after they had happened... But life has been so busy lately between work, dealing with our older hens - the broody and the non broody, the ducks - wild or hormonal domestics and trying to keep on top of making sure the incubators were topped up with water, and the eggs in the Rotohatch were turned on time.
On the evening of Sunday the 26th of November I quit turning the 4 remaining Rotohatch eggs, apparently it is a good idea to stop here with air cell damaged eggs as you can give them a little longer to get into hatch position. We didn't candle on this day.
I've read that by this time, turning eggs is less important. I was worried though, on day 14 we removed a quitter, our chances of anything hatching were narrowing, would anyone make it out of their egg?

The Brinsea incubator hummed away, and every 45 minutes it would beep and slide the turning disk around on it's own, the eggs would roll over.

On Monday evening I re read through the manuals again, several times. One thing that confused me... the Brinsea said it's automatic turning would stop when the counter on top said there was only 2 days left... but that would be on day 19, isn't lock down day 18? so I spent a good chunk of my evening scrolling through forums, hatching calculators and web pages trying to figure out when I should prepare the eggs for hatch day.
Seems you can stop turning about day 16 or 19 if you want, and it also seems most people locked down day 18, so that's what we went for.

Tuesday evening, anxious as ever, i prepared my notebook full of egg weights, jewelry scales and torch. We started with the Brinsea, carefully removed the lid, removed the turning tray for cleaning as it would no longer be needed

 

 

and replaced with a piece of non slip shelf liner. The Brinsea Mini ii advance comes with a piece of corrugated cardboard cut into the exact shape needed, it's designed to be used during hatching and thrown away. You do need something non slip here as if your chicks hatch onto a slippery surface it can cause leg issues when they try wandering around.

I'm not actually sure where in New Zealand to get replacements of the Brinsea cardboard ones, (although they are available) so it made more sense to just use it as a template for the shelf liner.

 

Egg 1 and egg 7 were weighed and candled

 

 

 

They were right on track! weight loss maybe a touch more than i'd hope, the embryo now fills most of the egg. There are good visible veins. Air cell for egg one looked great, air cell for egg 7 was a bit saddle shaped but should be okay. I marked the area of the air cell with a pencil, placed the lid on the incubator, turned off the auto turn function and filled up both sides of the water cup to raise humidity.

 

Moving on to the Rotohatch

 

Egg 9 and 10 both looked like this, good!

 

 

I'm pretty sure this is egg 12, unfortunately it doesn't show up well here but the air cell on this egg was massive, taking up probably half of the egg. The embryo moved but was far smaller than it should have been. We weren't sure that this chick would develop enough to hatch, and even if it did, whether it would have enough room to turn so it could pip and hatch.

 

 

Egg 11 didn't look great either, it was hard to find the air cell, weight loss was good and the embryo was a good size, but there were no veins, only a cloudy area above the embryo. We kept it in anyway just incase. If it had quit, it was definitely recent, I didn't think the chances of it rotting and exploding were high. Plus we just didn't feel sure.

Eggs 9 and 10 were moved into the Brinsea where i felt they had a better chance, we cut down egg cartons to fit so they could stand vertically with their air cells upright.

Eggs 1 and 7 were left horizontal.

 

In the Rotohatch, we filled the entire base with 10mm of water, placed the cleaned and disinfected lower hatching tray in with a piece of shelf liner on it. Eggs 11 and 12 were placed on it in their egg carton.

 

Nothing to do now but keep water topped up in the Brinsea and wait

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

candlling day 14

Day 14 rocked around, exciting! at this point we were down to 7 eggs, with 5 removed that didn't seem to have been developing at all.
2/3rds of the way through incubation and time to see if we have anything still developing

 

 

I forget which egg exactly was which, but most looked great! nice healthy veins, in some you could see the little chicken embryos moving around.

 

Egg Number 8 didn't look as good, there were no visible veins, only the small dark shadow of an embryo and cloudy patches. After a while of trying to decide whether to leave it, we worried that it didn't look right, what if it had died, what if the egg exploded and infected the other good eggs?
We removed it and checked, it looks like this baby had died maybe about day 12, I will save the pictures for another update

 

Our older birds are doing well, the weather is warming up and the days are getting longer which means more frequent eggs. It also means more frequent broody hens

 

 

Tanqueray seems to go broody about once a month. She's quite determined and can take a while to break. Tanky is doing a lot better with our original hens, she's found her spot on the roost and hangs out with the big ladies.

 

 

 

Sunny here has also gone broody in her typically bitey angry way. It never lasts long and she's back to runing around the yard harrasing the duck hens. It seems a few days with Sunny in broody prison helped Tanqueray integrate a bit better. Blue is in the back of the wheel barrow trying to encourage her friends to lay here for some reason.

 

And last but not least, our wild ducklings like to wander the yard. In the mornings they are already in the duck ponds, eating out of the grandpa feeder, drilling holes in the lawn... and at night they wander back to the flooded paddock to sleep with the other wild ducks.
So much for them being gone

 

 

 

Shipped eggs, candelling the slow movers day 10

At this point, we are actually on day 16... the rotohatch eggs are no longer being turned, as they were obviously the most damaged I wanted to give them a bit more time to get into hatching position.
Tomorrow evening all remaining eggs will be candled and (hopefully) all will go into lock down.
We are over 2/3rds of our way through incubation and the waiting doesn't get any easier!

Monday 20th was day 10, apparently it's okay to candle eggs you are unsure of from day 7
 
 
this would be eggs 2-6 in the Brinsea.

                                                  

Egg 3

Egg 5

 

All 5 looked empty, no veins, no visible embryo. Air cells were either difficult to spot or showed me I had missed that they were damaged.

But they didn't smell either, after some internal debate over whether we should leave them in and check again Friday, we took out egg 2. I candled again
and held it for a bit,
it was warm

but it looked clear.

 

 

I took it to the kitchen and placed it in a snaplock bag, I've never cracked an egg that's been kept so warm for so long and wasn't entirely sure what we'd find once the shell was open.

I took a butter knife and tapped around the fat end of the shell like it was a coconut.

 

 

Once carefully opened, it was obvious, the egg wasn't at all developing. Unfortunately the bag smooshed the yolk, I couldn't tell if the egg was even fertile.

 

 

Egg 3 was carefully opened into a plate since it seemed like the next 4 eggs wouldn't explode stinky rotten egg everywhere. Much easier to see! looks like this egg may have been fertile, the air cell has grown, but nothing else has.

 

 

Egg 4 looked the same, the little circle off to the side is a meat spot i think, just a normal possible tiny piece of something from the hen that ended up in her egg. The germinal disk is damaged.

 

 

Egg 5, the yolk here didn't hold together. While tapping open the shell, I hit a large air pocket. This egg actually doesn't look fertile. Although even if the egg was, it looks like it was too damaged to do much.

 

 

Egg 6 has some funny bubbles in the air cell, it also look infertile.

 

So we went into week 2 with 2 eggs remaining in the Brinsea, and 5 in the Rotohatch.

I don't at all blame the Brinsea, I do think I should have left these eggs a bit longer before letting them turn, although egg 1 and 7 both look great. I also wonder whether incubating these eggs upright would have helped. Both eggs have lost about 1 gram of weight more than they should so I've been adding a bit more water. Egg 7 has a large saddle shaped air cell, I really hope It'll be okay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

counting your chickens, candling day 7

I gotta tell you
that first week of incubation, waiting for day 7 to candle
to see if there are signs of life
or if you are just slowly warming a tub'o'duds
is
excruciating!

The little Brinsea incubator has been fantastic, other than the room temperature alarm going off a few hours after setting, all I've really had to do is make sure to keep the water channel filled. Being the ii version, this can be done through an external bit without removing the incubator lid, there is a mark to fill up to which means only half the inner pot will have water in it.
The colour of the plastic can make a bit hard to see whether a top up is needed, although that is probably just the lighting in the room. Probably also worth mentioning that distilled water is reccomended for use in incubators, so I've purchased a bottle of it.
A few eggs have had to be repositioned a few times as they've moved a bit close to their neighbor on the turning plate, but it really has been pretty hands off.

The Rotohatch has been entirely different. Our more obviously damaged eggs went in here, placed in the incubator and left for 42 hours without turning, hopefully it would help the air cells settle. I trimmed down an egg carton, cutting the bottoms off as well to allow air flow around the eggs.
The 5 eggs in this incubator will stay in the cartons, incubated upright and as we obviously can't use the auto turner, I've had to place part of the remaining egg carton under one end so the eggs are tilted at about a 45 degree angle. Manual turning should happen an absolute minimum of 3 times a day - an odd number of turns means the eggs won't rest on the same side every night - I have gone for 5,
5 times a day the egg carton is turned so the opposite end is elevated, then I mark in a chart the time this happened.
Our little Rotohatch has a hygrometer built in, it tells me that the humidity in the incubator sits at around 45% with no water added. I don't really trust it to be honest, but plenty of people incubate without adding water at all until hatch so I chose to add no water and see whether there was even any development at all, and what each eggs weight loss had been like during the week before worrying too much.

So my first week has simply been: making sure the Brinsea hasn't run out of water
and fussing over the Rotohatch, While making sure to clean and sanitize my hands before touching any eggs... while nervously counting down the days until I could check inside.
I'm naturally a pretty anxious person so that part wasn't great fun, I had to keep reminding myself that it is better to not over handle the eggs now as it can damage the embryo
Finally, Friday! I expected to get great results from the Brinsea, and find nothing from the Rotohatch...
I was wrong

 

(I candle with a $20 LED torch from a hardware store)

Egg 1, one of 4 blue orpington eggs and my first egg out of the Brinsea. Theres an embryo! moving around right down by my torch! there are veins too, but they don't show up well here. The air cell is now quite obvious and growing well, i should have marked it with a pencil, but it was too hard to hold the torch, the egg and draw. So it was weighed and placed back

So that's good, one possible nugget.

Eggs 2,3 and 4 were our other blue orpingtons. These were all candled in order

all I could see was yolk... no veins, no embryo
I realised the air cell wasn't really growing larger
these were also weighed and placed back. Hmmm
Eggs 5 and 6 (black orpingtons) were the same. Warm and empty of obvious life. Weighed and returned. Well that doesn't look good.. it could be that they are slower to develop or that maybe it was just harder to see through their shell for some reason. I will candle again on day 10 and hope to see a  difference. They aren't smelly or oozing but i'll keep a watch on them.

Egg 7 on the other hand

 

Veins! and a tiny little eye! I did find it interesting that the 2 eggs closest together in in the Brinsea were the only 2 that look any good so far, but it could just be a coincidence.

 

The biggest surprise was when we moved on to the Rotohatch

 

Every single egg in there was developing! even number 12 (somehow we didn't get a photo of that one) with its worryingly shaped air cell.

I don't know if it was the extra days in the incubator withought turning, or the fact that the Rotohatch eggs are upright instead of laying down that has meant the difference in results. We aren't even using the Rotohatch as intended, I guess the eggs were probably more damaged during shipping than I thought, but we will wait until Monday night before worrying too much about writing off those 5 possible duds.

 

I've added a small tub of water to the Rotohatch as the weigh in results showed I had lost a bit more water than I had hoped, but things are looking pretty good so far!

 

 

Pre nuggets and the Brinsea Mini ii Advance

The ducklings have left, their brooder box is empty, clean, disinfected and getting a few new windows put in. If the older birds think they were being punished having to share a coop with a new bantam hen or the yard with some noisy ducks they have no idea what's about to hit them
My fertile Orpington eggs have arrived! 4 Blue and 8 Black

Shipped eggs already have a lower hatch rate than eggs you would collect from your own yard. All sorts of things can affect their viability,  including extreme temperatures and rough handling during transport and changes in air pressure if they need to be flown in
I wanted eggs from a particular breeder so I chose to take the risk, they arrived early on Wednesday the 8th of November. It is advisable to let shipped eggs rest at room temperature for 24 hours  with the large end upward when they arrive, to let the air cell settle. So ours were left in the same room we would incubate along with a bottle of distilled water I would use to increase humidity from their arrival.
On Thursday evening I cleaned and disinfected my incubators and set them runing. I have not used an incubator before, let alone these ones. I wanted to check whether they would hold a steady temperature, and whether there were any issues. All good there

I was unsure whether to set the eggs on Friday evening or Saturday morning, I wanted to be home to watch the hatch, but would they start to pip on day 21, or would the likely be hatching day 21? it can take 24 hours from pip to hatch...
But I'm impatient, so on the evening of Friday the 10th I gathered supplies - jewelery scales, a notebook, my candelling torch a pencil and pen.
I have more faith in the Brinsea, so the eggs I have the most hope for went in there. I started with the 4 blue eggs. All weighed and documented. A chicken egg should loose about 13% of it's weight during incubation as the air cell grows and the chick develops, this is controlled by upping your humidity (if your egg looses weight too fast) or lowering it (if your egg is not loosing enough weight)
A chick incubated where the humidity is too high can drown in excess fluid when it tries to pip internally, a chick incubated where the humidity was too low can become shrinkwrapped in the membrane when it tries to hatch.

I also candelled the eggs with an LED torch to check the state of their air cell and for cracks in the shells. My first 6 looked great! maybe slightly more porous than I had expected but otherwise good. I was also used to pictures of eggs candelled partway through incubation, for some reason I expected their air cells to be bigger already but I could barely see them.
And then I got to egg 7, the egg itself had no external damage, but the air cell moved around when I turned the egg. Uh-oh! detached air cell!
I filled the Brinsea with the best eggs, filled the water cup to it's indicated line and let it start on it's way.

I was left with 5 eggs, I had expected to just lay them in the Rotohatch incubator and let it auto turn them.... 2 of those eggs had detached air cells, and 1 had a weird bubble as well. A quick look on backyardchickens.com showed that all may not be lost with these eggs.
I took an empty egg carton and trimmed it to fit the incubator, trimmed the bottom so the eggs could get air flow and set them inside.
Apparently if the air cells on these were to reattach, it would have happened during the 24 hours they sat. But I can try incubating with the eggs standing vertically, turning after 36-42 hours very gently and by putting something under one end of the carton. I will stop turning these on day 16 instead of day 18. Hmm we'll see how we go here! it seems a waste not to at least try

 

My Brinsea Mini ii advance.

It's a neat little incubator! has a huge viewing window for watching hatches, holds 7 large hen eggs and plates are available for bantam or quail eggs. There is also a cardboard insert to replace the removeable turning disk with so the chicks have something to stand on during hatching.

I understand that with the older model you had to remove the lid every time you topped up the water container, but with the mini ii, there is an opening on the outside, which is great!

It's a great incubator for a newbie like me, very set and forget. You simply press the + and - buttons together to get to the menu, here you can control temperature, turning angle, how far above and below set temperature the incubator can get before it sets off a warning and whether or not it turns your eggs automatically. You can also set the number of days for your hatch. All factory settings have been set for chicken eggs except for some reason, you will want to change the number of days from 40 to 21 (or most things, obviously, if you are setting other bird eggs)

 

There are a few other things you can play with on this model, including being able to set a period of time to cool the incubator for about half an hour, this is to replicate a mother hen leaving her nest. I haven't used this option this time.

You will find that your mini advance will make a bit of noise getting up to temperature, and that it beeps before turning eggs. Remember to read the instructions! the incubator wants to be in a room away from draughts but with good airflow, also you don't really want the room to get below 20 degrees C overnight or in a room that gets too warm during the day.

My power plug for this has a big boxy part on the plug end which means I couldn't plug anything else into the wall plug next to it (not a huge issue) also I left a window open the first night and set off the 'your room is too cold for optimal use of this incubator!' alarm. pressing okay stopped the alarm but -RM remained on the screen until I warmed the room and pressed okay again.

 

The Rotohatch

this incubator I got from a workmate, it includes a built in hygrometer and has an autoturner, has plates you swap out before hatching and has a digital display and easy to set temperature.

I don't really trust the temperature or hygrometer readings  on this machine, I had looked at buying a good thermometer and hygrometer to rely on instead but we managed to 'get talked into' (haha) buying the Brinsea incubator instead. I had intended to only set  eggs in that, but as we recieved 12...
my workmate has hatched in this incubator so we will see how we go.
it's not really designed to hold eggs vertically so if things go wrong, I won't really be able to blame it.

It doesn't really have a great viewing area during hatch, and the fan is noisy. Temperature also climbed about .2 degrees higher than I wanted the first day but seems to have settled. I won't be able to comment on turning ability as I will have to do this by hand. I do have to avoid placing eggs too close to the turning bar that hangs down as it rotates.

 

I'm excited and nervous to candle on day 7 and see if we have any development!

 

 

Not used in this experiment - the broodiest of hens, Tanky
Tanqueray goes broody about once a month. She was broody the day the ducklings arrived, and she is broody as they leave. She's more determined than any other hen, after about 6 days in the broody cage she still races straight for the nest boxes if given the opportunity.
I have no doubt, she'd be a great mama. But she wouldn't be able to sit on all of the eggs, which would mean we would end up with 2 groups of babies to protect and integrate. Plus part of the point of this exercise is to have birds that imprint on us and are friendly, which won't really happen with Tanky as mum.  

 

The ducklings are too cool for us, so they've made a group decision to move out!

Ducklings aren't small for very long.
Their first day with us they were tiny, curious, fluffy
bouncing around in the box they arrived in.
This was only about 5 weeks ago!

Before long they were racing around as fast as their little legs could carry them, we set up an outdoor run so they could spend their days outdoors. They loved swimming and destroying grass. Finding worms, peeping, eating, pooping, eating poop.

They weren't so fond of the part where we bundled them into a box every morning to ship them out, and back into the box in the evening to come back indoors

But they did love their indoor box. After work I would get home, clean out the wet dirty wood shavings, clean poop off the warmer (we had it turned off after about 2 weeks, but left it in as they loved climbing on it), get them fresh mint to nibble and a fresh dirt wad to destroy

 

 

They dabbled, peeped, spyed on us throuh their windows and climbed all over their cardboard box jungle gym

 

 

 

Even when they were so big they pushed each other off to get on top.

Towards the end of October they were starting to get a bit big for their indoor brooder box. Poop from that many big ducks naturally starts to make a now quite dusty room also a bit stinky.

All the kids had most of their juvenille feathers, their flight feathers well on the way. One of the gang let us know she was a girl by quacking loudly amongst all the baby duck noise from the others. They all let us know they didn't appreciate being picked up to go into their transport box by runing and hiding then scratching as much hand skin as they could when you could finally get hold of them.

 

  

 

The nights were warm enough, and they had a shelter to sleep under
it was time to let the ducks sleep outside
They pressed against the fence peeping and beeping! we want to go inside! On their second night they escaped. We went to open the coop door to let the big kids out in the morning and there they were! helping themselves to the big ducks' ponds...
Stevie, Bonnie and Whitney weren't just unimpressed. They were terrified! we aren't sure whether the ducklings just wanted to hang out with the big kids, or wanted what they saw them using, but the buffs ran and kept out of their way.

 

 

That night they cried to be let back into the house, we herded them back to their run, it wouldn't be long now and we would remove their fence for good. For the rest of the week they Stayed in their run, I would come home from work, clean their water and refill their food. Yesterday afternoon we let them out for a wander
They promptly sampled every water bowl, dug in the bushes and dove for the big ducks' ponds.

 

Sunny and Lacey sampled their food while the others stayed out of their way.

 

 

We left for the supermarket and came back after the sun had gone down

 

Our lot were in their coop, settling for bed.

The wild ducks were nowhere to be seen (or heard)

A wild duck hen yelled loudly from the bottom paddock

 

We thought maybe they'd be back this morning for breakfast, but there was still no sign of them. So I took my coffee and walked down the driveway towards the flooded bottom paddock. It's a popular hangout spot for the local mallards and there are many families down there... including 9 new juvenile ducks.
So the dorks have moved on, but it's a good thing. We never expected them to stay, and now they can learn how to do wild duck things like forage and fly from other wild ducks

Good luck peepers!